B.C. man to get adult sentence for sex assault as teen while under 24/7 supervision

A 18-year-old man in B.C. will be sentenced as an adult for a sexual assault that occurred two years ago while he was under a 24/7 supervision order.

In a decision this week, Judge Gregory Rideout laid out a number of troubling incidents leading up to the supervision of the man, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, including random sex assaults and injuring correctional officers.

In September 2016, a 58-year-old woman from Colombia was visiting her pregnant daughter at her home in Vancouver, according to court documents.

The victim’s daughter said she was standing in the kitchen with her mother, when she saw her neighbour staring at her through his window next door. At the time of the trial, she described feeling “creepy.”

Early the next morning, the man broke into the home, making his way into the room where the 58-year-old woman slept, and masturbated “while sniffing up and down her body, from her forehead to her feet,” before sexually assaulting her.

The woman woke up, ran into her daughter’s bedroom, screaming that there was a man in her room. The man was believed to have escaped through an open window.

The man was under court-ordered supervision by two caregivers at the time of the assault.

One of the caregivers said he checked on the teen at 12:30 a.m. and again at 3 a.m.

Security camera footage at trial showed an unidentifiable figure moving in the alleyway between the houses between the check times, believed to be the teen.

Police also found one of his fingerprint’s on the daughter’s window.

Man’s lengthy rap sheet, mental health considered

In the judge’s decision on whether to sentence him as an adult, in which he was required to consider the man’s First Nations status, the judge noted a lengthy criminal history and a lifetime of mental health challenges.

A middle child of five, the man was born in Regina before his family moved to Vernon in 2010.

He was diagnosed at six years old with ADHD, although his parents told the court they believe that was a misdiagnosis.

According to the pre-sentence report, the man had experienced auditory hallucinations as young as 13, “having thoughts about going on a massacre,” which caused him to lose sleep despite knowing “it wasn’t right.”

He was first arrested in Vernon in 2015 for assaulting his younger sister. He was then moved into care at a Vancouver halfway house where he was arrested three separate times for indecent acts in the span of three days in March 2016.

That same month, he committed two sexual assaults, grabbing the buttocks’ of two women while they were walking their dogs.

Attacks continued, court documents show, including in November 2017, while in custody at Burnaby Youth Custody Services, where he sent two correctional officers to hospital after punching them when he was ordered to go to his room.

Defence said the man is 18 years old and physically large, but he is “immature and mildly intellectually disabled,” and “intergenerational impacts” of residential schools, low income and unemployment played into his actions.

The judge said the man’s attack was deliberate and calculated.

“His age and immaturity certainly did not dissuade him from his express quest to break into the subject residence and then to sexually assault the woman he believed to be the ‘sister,’” Rideout said.

Rideout also said the man’s mental health issues and risk to reoffend most likely require long-term treatment and supervision.

“His needs will have to be addressed over many years, perhaps for his entire lifetime, to protect potentially vulnerable females from his sexual ‘hunger,’” Rideout said.

The Crown is asking for sentence of four years. The court documents do not indicate an argument on sentence time from the defence.